As Thomas Resurfaces, Knicks Rebuild a Franchise

Isiah Thomas was introduced as the head coach of Florida International University on Wednesday. Credit
Lynne Sladky/Associated Press

There was Isiah Thomas late Wednesday morning landing on national television in South Florida, on his feet, in another coaching job, albeit at the ground level of big-time college basketball. There again was the megawatt smile and rousing applause when Thomas sank his first rhetorical 3-pointer as the new Florida International University head coach.

“In life, you have your ups and downs,” he said. “I’m no different. But don’t expect me to just stay down, because that’s not happening.”

His cadence was as perfectly timed as the news conference to restart his career, on the day the Knicks would close out another lost season by routing the Nets, 102-73, at Madison Square Garden

. Probably just a coincidence, but at least now I have some idea of why I bumped into Thomas in the lobby of Dolphin Stadium early this year before the Bowl Championship Series title game.

The university provost introduced him as Isiah Thompson, but the athletic director, Pete Garcia, was obviously on the prowl for a name. He said he has personally known Thomas and insisted he had “thoroughly investigated” him after all the bad news in New York. Under questioning, the investigation sounded more like a dinner at which Thomas had Garcia believing he was Gandhi by the salad, if not at hello.

On the subject of the Knicks, Thomas more or less said his mission was impossible, and cited failed predecessors, all the way back to Willis Reed (who, for the record, made the playoffs and won a round in his one full season as Knicks coach). The team that Thomas left for Donnie Walsh, the Knicks’ president, and Coach Mike D’Antoni should have been so lucky.

For months, the 2008-9 Knicks played spirited, competitive basketball, though typically lacking in any semblance of lockdown defense. Their record was nine games better than in two of their three previous seasons, when they paid numerical tribute to Michael Jordan and ceased winning after their 23rd victory.

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In a more broad-based analysis, Walsh did succeed in freeing the Knicks from the Thomas-era constraints of long-term contracts for players with whom they would never escape the curse of mediocrity, or worse. Only one remains: center Eddy Curry, misidentified by many, mostly by Thomas, as a franchise player, and currently an infirm and immobile obstruction to the grand plan of spectacularly remaking the team in the free-agent market after next season.

Can the Knicks coax Curry back onto the court for enough meaningful minutes to create the belief that he is young (26) and offensively skilled enough to trade for sometime during his penultimate contract season? Impossible at this point to say, and that is the most profound example of the perplexity that will linger into summer. Such a long season, too many questions left unanswered.

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Should the Knicks re-sign the prospective free agents David Lee and Nate Robinson at the risk of recrowding the cap? Is Wilson Chandler a career front-liner, or just a rotation player after the overhaul? Will Danilo Gallinari, who showed glimpses of possible transcendence during a rookie season plagued by back pain that has led to surgery, be the next great European forward, or the next woebegone calamity?

If Walsh lets Lee and/or Robinson walk, the Knicks will be weakened next season, but that raises another question. What should their immediate ambition be: the low-level playoff contention they plunged from after the All-Star break with their newsreel of a roster, or the rapid development of their personnel keepers at the expense of their short-term hired guns, Al Harrington and Larry Hughes?

Given a fans’ referendum, I am guessing they would vote for the latter. Like the Thomas acquisitions Stephon Marbury, Jamal Crawford and Zach Randolph, these are players who are largely about numbers without valor. The true effects of the recession are ahead, but in the basketball scheme of things, Knicks fans have waited a long time and will endure another year with the reasonable assurance that the Walsh-D’Antoni plan is actually grand.

Speaking of uncertainty, at least the Knicks have a home in which they don’t feel imprisoned and which isn’t being swallowed by an indoor skiing and entertainment complex.

Pity the Nets; despite the infusion of young talent at point guard (Devin Harris) and center (Brook Lopez), they remain residentially stuck between a horrible place, the Meadowlands, and a hard place, Brooklyn. If shovels aren’t soon in the ground for the proposed arena, they’d be wise to relocate soon to the Rock, as Newark’s Prudential Center is called, if they want to compete for free-agent talent.

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With regard to college recruiting, Thomas at least has Miami to sell as he tries to build at an undistinguished Sun Belt Conference program. Working pro bono for the first year of five, the man who couldn’t deal with a female marketing executive in the Knicks’ front office and wound up on the short end of a civil sexual harassment lawsuit will also be expected to please spoiled players and their parents, university alumni, compliance officers and educators, among others.

Good luck to him in the reconstruction of his reputation, as daunting a task as the one he left behind, rebuilding the Knicks.

E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B13 of the New York edition with the headline: As Thomas Resurfaces, Knicks Rebuild a Franchise. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe